


Structural Priming, Syntactic Persistence, Maybe Now, Maybe Forever

by tyroneslothrop



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: ? - Freeform, Angst, Experimental, I don't know, M/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 11:52:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5415908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyroneslothrop/pseuds/tyroneslothrop





	1. And the Wind Sang Down the Streets

                I do not wish to impose literary devices. I do not mean to tell you how, when or what, the backstory or the foreshadowing. I mean to tell you the why. I mean to figure out the why, because truth be told reader, I still don’t know the ‘why’ myself. The why ascends above everything else like a dripping piece of meat, and I am the dog, the snapping Rottweiler held captive by a leash. Maybe this will help. I had a small flat. I had a small car. Every day, 12pm sharp, I drove out to the local radio station to tell the residents of Islington the forecast. I drove back to my husband, who did law things on his computer. It’s a little life. Or, it was.

-

                One day we were walking around the streets, and where there are streets there are walls, and in an alleyway there was a slow drawl of black spray paint, conjugal with the brickwork:

**_I REFUSE TO WRITE CHARACTER STUDIES ABOUT DANIEL JAMES HOWELL_ **

            I drew his attention to it. Maybe it was a prank he played himself, I reasoned. It was strange. Seeing his full name written was strange. I, myself, was used to tacking on a little ‘Lester’ at the end of it, just for aesthetic purposes. I liked the way the syllables melted into each other. Well, I still do. But that’s not the point.

                “Was that you?” he asked pointedly.

                I shook my head, and he stood there for a few more moments, incredulous.

                “Why would someone write character studies about me in the first place?”

                He kept walking. I slid out of bed and crept back to the spot that night under the velveteen sky, guarded with nothing but a torch, and peered at it. No clues, other than a swarm of moths buzzing over a grey, damp sweatshirt, located but a foot away. There was a design on it, two mops of black hair. Eerily similar to me and Daniel. I tried to pick it up, but the bugs crawled over my hands. Millions of black birds descended as I left.

                Then we got a letter. No address on the envelope, a small feminine scribble of ‘Dan and Phil’ instead. I blinked at Dan. He was stoic. He made himself another coffee. When I opened it, there was just a sheet of paper, I’m still not sure what I was expecting at that moment.

                **_WE ARE WATCHING YOU…. :3_**

                “We are watching you…?” I croak to the kitchen area. Daniel said ‘hmmm’. Went to his office. Did law stuff on his computer.

                I went out again that week, under the pretence that I was ‘seeking’, and left him in bafflement. A whorl of devastation spilled itself over the night, and I danced in the shadows the streetlights created. I was a migratory locust, my laughs thin and croaked like they were torn from a cockroach’s throat, I was George Samsa before the morning arrived, and I spewed out billows of smoke with my mouth. I was brusque and irate, and I was searching for walls and for symbols scratched into them, peering under saturated lamps at toilet stalls. Flickering arabesque neon’s directed me to every pub past every bridge and every landmark. I didn’t drink, I drifted, and I came back that night with nothing, other than passing someone on the dance floor who said to his companion, “I refuse to write…”, the rest of the sentence swallowed up by thumping bass. No-one knew me. When I arrived home the door was locked. I slumped against it. The sun had long since risen before I slept.

                There’s a wasp clawing at my writing desk. I accidentally made him nauseous too. I’d kiss him, and his teeth would begin to clack to the ring of _subjectivity, subjectivity, subjectivity,_ my serpentine tongue. He started drinking more coffee. His teeth tasted of staleness. I had the jitters, reader. I shook like I was cold. I can only write well when I’m drunk, reader. I used to tongue kiss vodka bottles to cope with the paranoia, I only ever told God and Daniel. Maybe that was the problem. Daniel would turn to his side when we slept in the same room. I’d never slide my arm around him. Every night was a startling, glittering nothingness, it poured itself over me like it was telling me to go to sleep. I never did. One night I went outside seeking, and all I seen under the damned brazen sky was ‘Dan 4 Phil’ scratched clumsily into a bus shelter. I told Dan the morning after. He blinked. Made himself another coffee.

                On June that year it became too much, I suppose. He peeled himself from me, and traveled I believe. He’d always come back with trinkets and bags of clothes, he would light scented candles to get the smell of death to drift out of our house. He was a flower of the mountain I suppose, but one that had lapsed into itself, crumpled, like a piece of origami that had been folded and unfolded again and again, retraced and aged. He spent more time out than in. I didn’t remember the last time I had breathed oxygen that wasn’t refracted through two glass panes. I still don’t. His toenail clippings were the fuel I burned to keep myself alive. I never asked him if he’d seen something new. I gorged myself on dreams and the night-time, maybe if I sleep myself to death they’ll go away. I lay drowned in my bed sheets and begged for the world to give me another name… my pen is slithering over the paper again, I cannot read my own writing again. Reality is ceasing again, I am infirm again. I will haul myself to bed and finish my narrative tomorrow, dear reader. It is important you know. I am asleep again.


	2. Palimpsest I

I am a simulacrum of a human I am a simulacrum of a human I am a human I am a simulacrum of a human I am a simulacrum of a human a human I am a human I am I am a simulacrum of a human a human I am I feel different I feel urges,

my own perceptions

trading condolences

with the cobbled stones of the street

_i feel different_

_hazy and unclear_

_i feel urges_

_between right and wrong_

call me desperate, call me Ishmael, just call me captain crisis, call me whatever you want, it doesn’t matter, I am an amalgamation of every thought you’ve ever had about me, I am running, running, running from my own brain Phil Lester is dead Dan Howell is too and I believe there are universes in my head wherein exists every single fictional character I’ve ever consumed, every fanfic I’ve ever read, a thousand different versions of me and Phil are all in the haven of my skull fucking each other senseless jabbing their cocks into each other’s asses and eyeballs shooting stale jism into the oily riverbeds in my brain I am running, running, running,

i didn't want to look

an overwhelming stillness

pulls down on

the corner of my eye

_tall black silhouettes_

_forcing itself through a wall_

_pressing my wrist against_

_bright blue pools_

_in London_

soon running will not be enough and soon I will have to ride buses from London to the the edge of the border take the underground train to France and live in tiny villages where no-one knows my name the silence in my head will be deafening the ring of _nothing, nothing, nothing_ will be seismic, consume my entire body and make me weak, trigeminal neuralgia, fatigue, the bakery, the bakery, the bakery, _fuck_ the god-damn bakery,

biting cold air in England

burned into my own life

echoed up and down around

_swiftly out of the darkness_

_what felt like_

_a completely empty death,_

_totally alone_

I will never consume baked goods again I will live completely healthy I will go vegan I will eat salads I will live like a fucking rabbit and anyone in acquaintance with me will fear me due to how fucking healthy I am, how much more sturdier my bones are how much more agile my legs are how healthy my mind is, the ring of _nothing, nothing, nothing_ so loud that its insistent screeching gives headaches to anyone within a one mile radius nothing nothing nothing nothing,

artificial amber glow

so many times over

it was a crisp winter’s night

totally alone

_gripping at_

_that particular time_

_i didn't want to look_

_i had to begin_

_stop running_

I am running, running, running and it is not enough.


End file.
